dobe Systems first showed a few paws, then a tail, then a couple ears
and some whiskers -- but now the company is letting the complete
Creative Suite 6 cat out of the bag.
After a series of sneak previews and early announcements, Adobe now is detailing the full CS6 line, the meat and potatoes of Adobe's business. It's important to a large number of people involved with photography, videography, design, and publishing on the Web or on paper, and it's set to be arrive within 30 days, Adobe announced today.
But CS products aren't cheap, so Adobe must periodically add something new to keep people coming back. This time around, Adobe is adapting CS6 for more advanced Web design and publishing on mobile devices, and it's got a major new way to buy the products for $50 a month, the new subscription plan called Creative Cloud. For CS3, CS4, and CS5.x customers, Adobe is offering an introductory offer of $30 per month.
The subscription includes a lot more than the CS6 Master Collection, including an 20GB Dropbox-like online file sync service, Lightroom for photo editing and cataloging, Adobe's new Edge and Muse tools for designing Web pages in the HTML5 era, the Touch apps for tablets, Web site hosting, and a tablet publishing service.
But for the traditional set, Adobe also is continuing to offer its perpetual-license model for the narrower CS6 line. The all-encompassing Master Collection CS6 costs $2,599 new and $549 to upgrade; the more basic Design Standard costs $1,299/$299; and the Production Premium and the newly consolidated Design and Web Premium options each cost $1,899/$399.
What exactly is Adobe throwing into the mix to attract customers? Plenty. Here's a breakdown, and Adobe's list of top items is at the bottom of the story.
Photoshop CS6
The updated Photoshop comes with a darker interface and a number of features. For one thing, its brainy content-aware tools are a notch brainier for filling in backgrounds or stretching features automatically. For another, it gets a more more sophisticated video editing that's now in the ordinary version of Photoshop, not just standard.
And it's got a lot of new hardware acceleration for better performance.
Blur effects can be used to selectively focus on one patch of a photo or
to simulate the currently vogue tilt-shift lens effect. And an adaptive
wide-angle filter lets people fiddle with photos to get more
natural-looking perspectives.
By itself, Photoshop costs $699 new for the standard version and $999 for the Extended version that adds 3D graphics and other features. It also can be used for $20 a month with an annual subscription or $30 per month for a month-to-month subscription.
Premiere Pro
Adobe's video-editing tool gets a radically simplified user interface that puts the video itself front and center rather than relegating it to panels encrusted with buttons and menus. The panel for managing video clips lets videographers scrub through videos and set the in and out points on the spot for faster work.
Keyboard-oriented editors also get new controls for trimming video clips
to a precise length, After Effects' Warp Stabilizer feature has been
built in to correct for camera shake and rolling shutter problems, and
the software can handle any number of cameras for multicam shoots.
Laptop users will be pleased to know that the hardware-accelerated
Mercury Playback Engine now supports higher-end new MacBook Pro models,
too.
After Effects
This program is for video editors who need to add visual effects, composite multiple videos together, and build motion graphics -- think of the logos that fly across a TV screen as the big game is starting up. The big new feature here is caching that dramatically improves performance. A memory cache and a disk cache mean that once AE effects such as color changes are calculated, they can be reused as a foundation when adding other effects; previously, the software would have to recalculate every layer each time a new one was added. Adobe hopes the new approach will lower the barriers to experimenting with new looks.
After a series of sneak previews and early announcements, Adobe now is detailing the full CS6 line, the meat and potatoes of Adobe's business. It's important to a large number of people involved with photography, videography, design, and publishing on the Web or on paper, and it's set to be arrive within 30 days, Adobe announced today.
But CS products aren't cheap, so Adobe must periodically add something new to keep people coming back. This time around, Adobe is adapting CS6 for more advanced Web design and publishing on mobile devices, and it's got a major new way to buy the products for $50 a month, the new subscription plan called Creative Cloud. For CS3, CS4, and CS5.x customers, Adobe is offering an introductory offer of $30 per month.
The subscription includes a lot more than the CS6 Master Collection, including an 20GB Dropbox-like online file sync service, Lightroom for photo editing and cataloging, Adobe's new Edge and Muse tools for designing Web pages in the HTML5 era, the Touch apps for tablets, Web site hosting, and a tablet publishing service.
But for the traditional set, Adobe also is continuing to offer its perpetual-license model for the narrower CS6 line. The all-encompassing Master Collection CS6 costs $2,599 new and $549 to upgrade; the more basic Design Standard costs $1,299/$299; and the Production Premium and the newly consolidated Design and Web Premium options each cost $1,899/$399.
What exactly is Adobe throwing into the mix to attract customers? Plenty. Here's a breakdown, and Adobe's list of top items is at the bottom of the story.
Photoshop CS6
The updated Photoshop comes with a darker interface and a number of features. For one thing, its brainy content-aware tools are a notch brainier for filling in backgrounds or stretching features automatically. For another, it gets a more more sophisticated video editing that's now in the ordinary version of Photoshop, not just standard.
Photoshop CS6 adds new "content-aware" tools for making up image data automatically when objects are removed or elongated.
(Credit:
Adobe Systems)
By itself, Photoshop costs $699 new for the standard version and $999 for the Extended version that adds 3D graphics and other features. It also can be used for $20 a month with an annual subscription or $30 per month for a month-to-month subscription.
Premiere Pro
Adobe's video-editing tool gets a radically simplified user interface that puts the video itself front and center rather than relegating it to panels encrusted with buttons and menus. The panel for managing video clips lets videographers scrub through videos and set the in and out points on the spot for faster work.
Premiere Pro CS6 gets a streamlined interface and a retooled panel at lower left for organizing and trimming video clips.
(Credit:
Adobe Systems)
After Effects
This program is for video editors who need to add visual effects, composite multiple videos together, and build motion graphics -- think of the logos that fly across a TV screen as the big game is starting up. The big new feature here is caching that dramatically improves performance. A memory cache and a disk cache mean that once AE effects such as color changes are calculated, they can be reused as a foundation when adding other effects; previously, the software would have to recalculate every layer each time a new one was added. Adobe hopes the new approach will lower the barriers to experimenting with new looks.
No comments:
Post a Comment